What you're feeling is a now-thing and I know it doesn't have to be an always-thing.

But we're living on time that you're trying to steal, Santana.

And how can I make you see that time won't slow down, can't slow down? How do I make you understand that what you're doing can't last forever? Seeing you is like hearing a drum, only I can't get into its rhythm. Someone's pounding out all the beats echoey and broken around me, but it's an undanceable noise, it's like my body doesn't understand, like it keeps waiting for the beats to fit into a music that won't come.

I play with my own hair, wrapping it around my fingers and twisting it back and forth. I sit on my bed and try not to think of anything. I feel you creep into my mind, even though I know you're always there, really. I can't remember you not being in my thoughts, somewhere, like the water that runs at the bottom of creeks. The water that you like to put your feet into. The water that I think lives on its own current, running around the pebbles even when the water above it wants to go faster. You're just like that: a swirling thing that won't listen to the other parts of my mind, that lives by other rules, that is stronger than all the rest of me, because it's you.

I feel like, if I put the right words in the right order, you will see. But the right words feel like they fall apart whenever I put out my hands for them, or like they're pearls on a necklace and someone is cutting the string, and they're sliding off too fast for me to catch them. But. You're what helps me make the colors in my head into words and now I have to do that by myself, because it's for you that I need to make things make sense. I need you to hear my thoughts. Sometimes I think you can, when I kiss you. If I press my lips against yours carefully enough I can feel it all over you even in the parts where we're not touching. I can feel you hearing me.

When we're alone your hands remind me of birds, fluttering, always wanting to leave the ground. You don't do that in cheer practice. You don't do it in glee club. You don't do it in the hallways, you don't do it at the bleachers, you don't do it in class. When there's anyone else with us your hands are so still. Now your hands are shaking and you won't look me in the eye, like you have finally realized I know, that I have seen all the signs. So I take your hands in mine. It's all I can do.

Santana, dance with me, please.

It's not what you expected me to say, is it? Is it the right words?

Pulling you next to my body has always felt right, anyway. I wonder if we don't need words, just for now. I can hear music again. Can you? Dancing with you is drowning out the weird drumming and it's because your hand is in my hand, your cheek is against mine.

And I can smell you: that smell which I don't know anywhere else except when you're near me. I forget it when you're not.

I can't imagine what it's made of. It's just you, and because it's like nothing else it leaves when you do.

It's my favorite, though, and when you're near I can't for a minute imagine not knowing it, even though when we're not together I won't be able to remember what it's like. How strange for something I love so much to be so careless.

I hold you right at the bottom of your spine and make sure you are close to me while I move. You like it when I lead you around my room to the notes in my head, so I do that. I think hard on each note so you can feel it in the twitch of my arm and the pull of my hip and the twist of my leg. I wonder if there really is a space below my collarbones like it feels there is. It's like a bottomed out feeling, like when we ride the roller coaster, only it's so much higher, and it's empty and squeezing at once.

I want to kiss you. That will help. So I do: I kiss you while we dance, seeing you behind my eyes even though they're shut, feeling the sharp notches of your spine under my palm and pushing away what that means for a minute with you, kissing you.

I wish time would stop, too.